


The Shadow Cast in a World of Ruin

by PostPrincessPiaP



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Dealing With Loss, F/F, Original Characters - Freeform, Partially Automated luxury cloud communism, Past Character Death, Pre-Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, Ruined Timeline, mild body horror elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:28:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25802878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostPrincessPiaP/pseuds/PostPrincessPiaP
Summary: Before he returns to the past, G'raha Tia must meet with a lone shadow cast stubbornly towards the future, even in a world bereft of light.
Relationships: Calofister/Lalai Lai (Final Fantasy XIV), Calofisteri/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), OC/OC, Rielle de Caulignont/Laurisse de Jervaint
Kudos: 5





	The Shadow Cast in a World of Ruin

G'raha Tia took a moment to straighten his robes and fiddle with his hair as he stood before the massive gateway at the center of the palace of Dun Scaith. Ever since his awakening he’d found little reason to care about how he appeared to others (After all, being the immortal guardian of the crystal tower itself was generally impressive enough on its own), but there was something about meeting with an Empress that made even him want to straighten himself up just a little. Conveniently at either side of the double doors was a small alcove with a basin and mirror presumably for the exact purpose, for at a glance he looked utterly frightful. The airship ride had not been a kind one. With the aether of the world so completely damaged, even the clearest days for air travel were turbulent at best. He’d been jostled about so thoroughly the entire trip that he had half a mind to check over the more crystalline parts of his body for fractures. The view though, when they had cleared the violent currents into the relative calm of the sea of clouds, had been worth every bump and bruise.    
  
Even having seen it for himself, after all he HAD seen in his life, G'raha could still scarcely believe the place actually existed, and that was before taking into account the ruin of the world below. Such a titanic amalgamation of floating islands and structures taken from all across the skies of Eorzea and beyond, big enough to truly function as a sovereign nation. Logistically, the idea was laughable. And yet, the truth was undeniable—he’d flown over dozens of malms of the place just to get to the capital, the uneven patchwork terrain littered with fields and villages, even rivers and forests. The sheer scale… even if to him his stewardship of the tower had seemed eternal, a few scant centuries hardly seemed enough for such a grand project to come together. And such an alliance that had built it, scattered people from all corners of both land and sky united in common vision, a prospect that seemed as impossibly vast and fragile as the very island on which they now lived. And all of it held together by just one woman…   
  
Taking one last look at himself, he decided that he was about as good as he was likely to get, and strode through the gap between the chambers' massive doors into the throne room, to face the “Empress of Shadow” as she chose to call herself these days. The living cornerstone of the floating continent, and the last remaining person besides himself to have called the Warrior of Light her comrade. Well, more than comrade in her case, a fact which had made the prospect of this meeting more than a little intimidating. It didn’t help that the woman herself, sitting before him, was nearly a dozen yalms tall.   
  
“Hm? Oh, the envoy to the past. Today being what it is, your arrival has slipped my mind. Please, join me,” she said, her deep, husky voice echoing slightly from beneath her helmet. Calofisteri was resplendent in a full suit of armor, black metal edged with gold joined together with dark mauve cloth, and framed with a flared winged skirt that draped almost to the floor. Curved spikes, like thorns, jutted out from her gauntlets and shoulderplates and her sinister helm, adorned with sharp obsidian horns that threatened to scrape the ceiling, bearing the distinct silhouette of a jackal. An emerald green glow spilled out from the long jagged, multi lensed eye holes of her face plate, giving the impression of more than just one pair of luminescent eyes beneath. G'raha wondered if, in his studies, he had shown more interest in Mhachi history that he might be able to puzzle out its significance, but even bereft of historical context it was more than imposing enough on its own. And then there was her hair…

He’s seen it from the sky, but even parsing the thick black tendrils as anything but particularly sinister plant vines had severely stretched his imagination. Yet, there they were, extending from the back of her helm and all the way down through the floor to the world beyond; a single massive braid of coiled, barbed ebony tendrils, each peppered with sinister yellow eyes that stared vacantly in all directions. The tale was that in the wake of the calamity, Calofisteri devoured the countless voidsent sleeping in the lost city of Mhach to become these “roots” that spread through every inch of the floating continent, binding every cloud island together and keeping a watchful eye on the world beyond its ever swelling border with her own flesh and blood. Macabre as it sounded, it was a kind of miracle that had made the fantastical dream of a nation in the sky a quickly realized reality, at a pace that may even have put the engineers of ancient Allag to shame.

He noticed that one of the thorns, quite close to the floor, had a small, brightly colored bow tied to its tip...

“Pray, tread carefully, the children leave such a mess you understand…”   
  
The empress gestured forward and, sure enough, lost in the grand scale of the massive, brightly lit chamber and it’s occupant, he had failed to watch his feet and almost stepped in a half eaten cupcake. Indeed, the red carpet that led to the throne was covered in spilled crumbs and discarded wrappers, most likely originating from the dozen or so sweets laden tables that he now noticed were clustered around the base of her seat, looking less fit for a royal audience and more laid out for a garden party. All part of the “Festival of Shadow” no doubt, a public Celebration that G'raha had caught glimpses of as he was escorted to his audience from the airship landing. Secretly he was already wondering if he might be able to slip his escorts and get a closer look once his meeting was complete. Here though, the revelry seemed mostly over. A few cleaners, all women and dressed in light, colorful clothing a far cry from anything like a uniform, were busy sweeping most of the mess up, and as G'raha carefully sidestepped the fallen treat, one quickly hurried past him to scoop it up.   
  
“You throw quite the party, your Grace.” G'raha quipped, as a means to break the ice, even as the Empresses staff continued to busily sweep and straighten things around him as if he were not even there. He’d been told that despite her intimidating stature and title, the quickest way to get anywhere with the Empress was simple and good natured candor, rather than standing on formality. In fact from what he’d heard the woman before him was hardly any kind of “Empress” at all, though seeing her in the flesh made it no easier to believe. A good thing then, that easy charm was something he always had plenty of to spare. “I suppose I should count myself lucky I woke up in time to attend!”   
  
“Hm?” The empress murmured, though her attention was clearly elsewhere. “Oh Swygthota, thank you but, please leave the chairs as they are, I really don’t know how many are coming with the last group…Susunu, don’t worry about the stains, really, I can clean those myself later, just leave them for now. Oh but if there are any sticky patches....” In fact, G'raha found himself completely ignored, even as he reached what felt like a suitable distance for conversation, as the Empress obliviously fussed about above him. Funny. Even as he watched her surreptitiously brush some crumbs off one of her own titanic thighs into a cupped palm, then stare at it pensively as if unsure what to do with them, she appeared no less daunting. Certainly a little less regal, but there were some things that even the sad little fistful of crumbs she now privately clenched atop her lap could dull. Quietly he found himself taking a few steps backwards, picturing in his mind's eye that perhaps as close as he had been he would look, from her perspective, uncomfortably close to a bug to be stepped on.    
  
“That should be enough. Now, may I beg a moment of privacy? The envoy came to discuss matters of some delicacy you understand…”   
  
The cleaners quickly packed up their gear and shuffled out, with one or two of them shooting very noticeable glares at G'raha as they did so. What he’d done to upset them, he couldn’t imagine, but from how venomous they had looked he wasn’t in any hurry to find out. It didn’t really matter anyway. What mattered, more than anything else right now, was finding out more about the titan before him, not as an Empress, but as a woman. A woman who, some three centuries ago, had loved the Warrior of Light.   
  
When he first awoke, the name Calofisteri Blackwind was little more to him than historical trivia. A great and terrible mage from the long dead Mhachi Empire, a supposed giant who terrorized the battlefield with the power of the Void made fully her own. Although really all that amounted to was counting her among any number of incomprehensible horrors spawned by the War of the Magi and reduced to little more than fodder for stories to scare children away from the dark arts. Now...well he wasn’t sure what to make of her.   
  
To the people of the Floating Continent, she was a hero; to the Ironworks, she was an unreliable ally; to the history books of the world he’d left behind, she was a demon; but as a person, specifically the person who had grown perhaps the closest out of anyone to the Warrior of Light, she was an enigma. Few outside of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn had ever seemed to know about her existence, and fewer still had much of a grasp on her as a person. The best he could find was in records of the encounter with the machine lifeform Omega, and between the accounts of Cid Garlond and Nero tol Scaeva, the only thing either could agree on about her was that she embodied the absolute worst qualities of the other, with none of the charm. Though it was always couched in more diplomatic terms, She, or rather, the her that had existed before she became “Empress”, represented a blindspot in their understanding of Marguerite Legrande at the time before her death, and considering her nature as a kind of creature of the void, a potentially dangerous one. And all the more irritating, she had long refused to help with inquiries until the tower was cracked open and their long held dream had born fruit. Now, with the date of his journey to the past approaching, she needed to be accounted for while they still had the chance, and who else to do it but the man who would, potentially, have to deal with her himself?   
  
Well, that wasn’t the  _ entire _ reason that G'raha had insisted on doing the “accounting” personally.    
  
“A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance, Empress,” he said, punctuated with a simple bow. “Thank the twelve that the winds aligned enough to permit us to meet in person.”   
  
“Yes, it was quite a stroke of luck,” Calofisteri replied, in a voice that skirted the border between  _ polite _ and  _ bored _ a little too keenly not to notice. This, he’d been warned about well before coming; somewhat fittingly for someone meant to hold domain over shadow, the Empress struggled to lift her tone much higher than  _ gloomy  _ even at her very best. “In truth, I was surprised to be informed you would be coming here yourself, although I am thankful you were able to make time for me. I have followed news of your awakening quite closely after all. You are a fascinating figure”   
  
“Ah, needn’t have gone to all the trouble,” G'raha protested, raising his hand out of false modesty, even as internally he beamed. It was selfish given all that had transpired since he first entered his slumber, but, given the severity of everything around him, he couldn’t help but bask in these moments where he got to feel a tiny bit like a living legend. If only to momentarily quell his doubts about the worthiness for the task ahead. “Really in the end I was little more than a supporting character to the true hero of the tale...”    
  
“And yet, it is this supporting character who has captured my curiosity, ever since the Ironworks made me privy to it. I knew, of course, of their plans for the Crystal Tower, but to think there was someone acquainted with my little lamplight within it... In truth, for all Marguerite told me of her experience with The Void, it is a pity I did not learn of  _ you _ sooner...”   
  
_ Ah _ . He couldn’t say he hadn’t been expecting this. Perhaps not so soon, or so bluntly, but he could hardly pretend to be surprised. And the sting of disappointment must have been obvious on his face, because the Empress very quickly changed her tone, the tinge of malaise in her voice quickly replaced with an almost bashful sense of concern.    
  
“Ah, do not take it as a slight. The Warrior of Light kept many of her deepest scars hidden, even from me. The tragedy of partings always weighed heavily upon her. Why, I recall learning the tale of one of her staunchest allies, a son of Ishgards noble houses who sacrificed himself in her defence, only by chance after taking a young knight aspirant of the land under my wing….so please, do not let it trouble you.”   
  
G'raha nodded in response even as he averted his gaze. One bitter disappointment swiftly replaced with another. Truth be told, he almost would have preferred to know that Marguerite  _ had  _ utterly forgotten him than be left wondering, right up until however long it took for them to reunite face to face. It was an ugly thought that no amount of time or conscious effort or attempts at good humor had allowed him to truly squash, and the grip it had on him right now made him feel well and truly childish.    
  
“I’m… terribly sorry. I should have broached the subject with more care. I know full well, after all, what a terrible thing it is, to survive a brush with eternity.”   
  
Though he could not see her face, The Empress, for her part, seemed wracked with concern, clasping and unclasping a fist to her chest in worry. The same fist, he noticed, that had previously been grasped upon her lap; already it was leaking crumbs all over her armor without her even realizing it. At that, G'raha couldn’t help but crack a weak smile. He wondered if perhaps, he’d been putting too much weight on this, the same way many had for him before discovering the ancient keeper of Allagan secrets was at heart nothing more than a man. This was never about anything more than, at most, commiseration, but at some point in the journey over he’d let himself get swept up in the gravity of it all. In the end, vast and ancient as she was, she too was still just a  _ person, _ trying her best despite it all.   
  
A person just like...   
  
“No harm done, your Grace. Your unmatched knowledge of the Warrior of Light is the reason I came here, after all!” he said chipperly, eager to forget the pangs of regret and change the topic of conversation. Whatever he might hope to say about their shared...experiences, now, mere moments after their introductions was definitely NOT the time.    
  
“Of course. To the business at hand, then,” the Empress said, with what G'raha could have sworn was a barely audible sigh of relief. Perhaps, for both their sakes, he should have asked one of his handlers to help mediate… Well, nothing to be done about it now.   
  
“I’d hardly put it that seriously! It is a rare pleasure to speak of her as a familiar face, after all.”   
  
“For myself as well.” The Empress said, her voice returning to its former level tone that made the idea of her finding pleasure in anything ever so slightly implausible. “The strength it granted me made compiling things so much easier.”   
  
“Ah, compiling?” G'raha said, innocently, though the implication of it boded poorly for his goals here today.   
  
“Yes. I have prepared a thorough dossier that I believe should suffice.” Sure enough, the Empress gestured and there on one of the garden tables was a thick, bound stack of papers. As undeniably helpful a gesture as it was, he hardly came all the way up here just to play courier for a few files. “The diagrams in particular should be most helpful.”   
  
“Ah, you needn’t have— _ diagrams _ ? Isn’t that a little excessive?” Curiosity overtook the warning bells ringing in his ears as G'raha found himself helpless but to leaf through the booklet in his hand and found many of them were, indeed, illustrated. Thoroughly illustrated.  _ Explicitly  _ illustrated. Stopping with mild horror on one of the dozens of elegantly drawn charcoal sketches, he found the actual details of it all the more baffling. The more artistic embellishments faded into a cross section of what looked more like the inner workings of a  _ bomb  _ than a mortal woman. Had… had she drawn all these herself? “I-Isn’t this very?!  _ Excessive?? _ ”   
  
“Ah, well, it is perhaps, a small indulgence on my part,” the Empress said calmly, staring thoughtfully out a window without a care in the world for the flustered panic of her guest. “Before our parting, Master Garlond and myself had a quite heated argument about the mechanics by which Marguerite had acquired her preternatural strength. He was never much of a biologist, you understand. He had a hard time grasping the complex interplay between black and white magic within her that allowed her to pack the power of a flare into every muscle without exploding into a charred sludge. This is but a small, albeit spiteful, way to correct the record. Do let me know if any of it is unclear.”   
  
“Oh it is  _ very  _ clear,” G'raha squeaked out as he clapped the bound notes shut, his face burning hot enough he feared even his crystal scar might be glowing red. Whether this was a test, or some kind of joke at his expense, it had well and truly caught him unprepared. The Empress seemed more than content to pretend not to notice, in a manner that must have been thoroughly calculated. So much for the morose bundle of nerves from before. Well, if she wasn’t going to say anything, the simplest answer was just to forget it and move on. Taking a deep breath and swallowing his embarrassment, he tried to correct things back on track. “But. Well. The written word only tells so much of the tale, after all. While we are both together I was hoping we might discuss **—** ”   
  
“Everything you could possibly want is within the document you hold,” Calofisteri interrupted, firmly. “Given the importance of your mission, I did not want to waste your time.”   
  
“Nothing so important that I can’t spare some time for an Empress!” he said, trying to push past her resistance. It seemed she did indeed intend to brush him off with this from the start. Really he couldn’t blame her. Measured as her tone was, it couldn’t have been an easy subject to revisit. Were this any normal situation, G'raha may have taken the hint and left things at this, but then, he might never get a chance like this again. He had to at least  _ try  _ to get a little more out of her.   
  
“You overestimate me, G’raha. I have little talent for conversation, so I’m afraid I’d do nothing more than repeat what is written. Please understand.”   
  
“I see.” It was clear that he’d get nowhere just by pressing the issue, which meant changing tactics. It was strange, but despite her words he did not get the feeling that the Empress was truly reluctant to talk. If she were, he reasoned, she would have just had one of her staff hand him the papers from the start and sent him on his way. Perhaps all this had been her way of getting him to spill his true intentions. Either way, at this stage there was no use dancing around it. “But...well, helpful as your writing on her may be, I did not come here  _ just  _ to share talk of Marguerite LeGrande.    
  
“Hm?” The empress cocked her head to the side. G'raha was sure he’d hit his mark. Nobody utters a ‘hm?’ dripping with  _ that _ much innocence without knowing exactly what it is that's being asked of them    
  
“I will admit, while your insight on her is invaluable, ‘tis you I came to get the measure of, your Grace.”    
  
“Me?” The green glow of her helmet's lenses intensified, as if the Empress's eyes were widening in surprise. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. What about me of value to your mission could there be to know?”   
  
This was...a little bit of a surprise, that she’d still keep the forced reluctance up. The Empress— Calofisteri Blackwind, rather—was still in most ways a mystery, but one thing that all accounts in the Ironworks library held in common was that she never wasted a breath that could be spent talking about herself. It was something that, much as he hated to admit it, he could relate to after being sealed in a tower for a few hundred years all alone. He’d thought… Well, he’d thought maybe the roundabout way that the Empress had been treating him had been some sort of test, or an act, or  _ something _ . Had he just misread her? Or was this just another layer of the little game she was playing?

“Come now, humility is one thing but you’re hardly some minor figure in history, and besides, none were closer to the Warrior of Light than you!”    
  
“Yes, we were lovers, but I fail to see the relevance. I was not her superior, nor her teacher. She did not rely upon me or my influence to act,” she said as matter of fact, gesturing to the neatly bound papers grasped in the miqo’te’s hand, “and I have already written of how furious our separation will make her several times within the documents you hold. They should suitably prepare you to navigate her wrath with as little death and dismemberment as possible.”   
  
“Wh—!” G'raha’s tail stood on end, his mind briefly picturing Marguerite not just as his comrade but the whirlwind of fury she became with axe in hand, and how keenly aware he had been for just a moment, standing next to her after seeing her conquer the Allagan labyrinth, of how easily she could have crushed him on the spot for the perhaps…  _ slightly impolite _ way he had teased her when they had first met on the hunt for aethersand. Not that he’d let it dampen his attitude at the time of course but, then that  _ was _ before her muscle ran on some form of continuous explosion, as the diagrams he’d glanced at hinted... “N-now that’s surely an exaggeration–”   
  
“Yes, my scribe at the time said the same thing. I believe her words were ‘This woman sounds more like a walking volcano than a legendary hero.’ It was something of a nostalgic observation, in truth, and not wholly inaccurate. I only wish she would stop apologizing for making it.”    
  
G'raha took a second to regain his composure. It was clear the Empress was quite content to tread in circles around his inquiry all day if it pleased her. He’d hoped he’d begun to crack her shell but it was beginning to feel like the Voidmage was shells upon shells all the way down.   
  
“Empress, I really must insist. For a task this grand in scope, I need any information at all that might be helpful. And…” He considered his next move carefully. While she had always supported the Ironworks from a distance, the Empress had kept her true feelings about their plan close to her chest. Given her deep connection to the Warrior of Light, and her level of influence and power, it had always been considered the best course of action not to  _ burden _ her with talk of certain hypotheticals that might cause her to act irrationally. But, he suspected, without incentive, prying any information from her may take days which he hadn’t the freedom to spend. “The Calling isn’t entirely  _ precise _ as yet you understand…”   
  
“Oh?” This clearly caught her attention, her titanic frame bending forward to meet him, tendril eye to eye. “ _ Imprecise _ , you say…”   
  
G'raha considered elaborating further on the chance that, if the two of them were together when the beacon was activated, her aether could be dragged along through the rift beside the warrior of light, in something of a reverse of the circumstances that had allowed her to survive the blooming of Black Rose in their own history. A chance that, in all honesty, had become all but impossible to ignore as the mechanisms of the Calling took shape. For once, the Empress saved him the effort.   
  
“I believe I understand,” she said, reclining back into her throne. The thick barbed vines of her hair sliding smoothly back into place like woven serpents. She’d accepted that quickly then— suspiciously quickly. Perhaps she’d already had a hunch, being an accomplished mage herself. “Then I see no harm in indulging you. What is it you wish to know?”   
  
G’raha sighed with relief. Interviews had easily been his least favorite part of the study of history, but, hopefully, with the history sitting directly in front of him and finally willing to cooperate, teasing out the truth wouldn’t prove TOO difficult. “Thank you, my lady. No need to tax yourself overmuch, and I shall try to be delicate, but any detail you could spare about the person you were in the time of the Warrior of Light… Well you understand, right?”   
  
“Yes, of course. How I used to be…” The Empress turned her gaze towards one of the many windows of her throne room, to the breadth of the Floating Continent and the Sea of Clouds beyond.

A minute passed in heavy silence, The anticipation weighed heavily up G’raha he watched her become lost in thought before finally clasping her hand tight as if in revelation.   
  
“I used to be much smaller, for one thing.”   
  
“Yes, I knew that—” G'raha snapped a little harder than he had intended, though the woman before him did not so much as twitch in response. Patience was one of the few virtues he thought he could rely upon after his time in Syrcus Tower, but patience with people like the Empress of Shadows was turning out to be a slightly different skill in which he was, perhaps, lacking in practice. “I mean, thank you, but I was hoping for something a little more about, I don’t know, your personality, perchance?”   
  
“Ah!” the Empress exclaimed, her deep voice radiating nothing but purest innocence. G'raha couldn’t tell if she was still being obstinate or was truly this scatterbrained. All the more annoying because, as far as he knew, the creature before him was literally allergic to being duplicitous. Despite her regal air, talking to her was starting to feel like trying to tease information out of someone's doddering grandsire.“ You must understand, my being has been devoted to the people here for centuries. It is rare that I can spare much thought to myself anymore.”   
  
“Then we can start small,” he pleaded, more than a bit exasperated. By this point any hope he had for some serious discussion between peers had evaporated, and in fact any prospect of serious discussion of any kind was growing increasingly dim. “Any story or detail that could be relevant...even a glimpse of your face? The Ironworks records had descriptions of course but no pictures and it’s, well, as good a starting point as any...”    
  
“Hm.” The Empress mused for a moment , fingers gently pressed against her metal face-plate. “Yes, I believe I can grant you that. It has been many years but I still recall the shape of it, I think. Spare me a moment…”   
  
With a hiss of air and dust the mauve helmet of her ceremonial armor split in half, and what was revealed beneath was...vines. The same eye-studded, thorn-covered black vines that extended from her head (or where her head should have been) down through her throne, and all throughout her  _ empire _ , the roots that held the thousand islands of the floating continent held together, and kept a watchful gaze over her borders. His irritation at the silly game of their conversation quickly faded, and G'raha instinctively brushed his crystal arm as he realized that this was all she was underneath it all, that this is what she had become to make all that she had done a reality. Her vagueness when talking about herself seemed far less ridiculous now. For, he wondered with a shudder that was as much about his potential future as his arresting present, how much of  _ herself _ was truly left?   
  
“Forgive me, it’s just so hard to do squashed within that helmet,” the Empress said absently as she rubbed her metal clad fingers against the twisted knot of her flesh, as if she were merely a young maiden taking a moment to adjust her makeup. Slowly, surely, color and form were massaged into the chaos, though G'raha found himself lacking the courage to steal more than a few glances until she was done. When he finally dared to get a proper look he was met with, indeed, a face, feminine and slightly chubby, eyes shadowed with gold and pale blue skin glittering with countless refractive freckles, like the brilliance of the night sky wrought of flesh. Her vast mane of hair was now, indeed, recognizable as such, at least to her shoulders, thick vines transformed to gentle strands that he was faintly aware were still tougher and sharper than any iron could hope to match. Bright blue eyes fluttered open, full blue lips parted gently, and a round nose that was, frankly, too cute to be on the face of anyone who called herself an empress of anything let alone shadow, twitched with renewed life.    
  
“I believe everything is now as it was. To scale, you understand,” she said, face moving as perfectly as if it had always been there, and in spite of the grotesquerie mere moments ago. “Forgive me for not thinking of it earlier. At my current scale, this shell eases my burdens but I often forget that it is not truly my skin.”   
  
Yes,  _ perfectly  _ was the word. For while her lips parted and eyes blinked, there was not a hint of change to her utterly neutral expression, despite her pleasant tone. A mask of metal swapped for a mask of skin and bone. And in truth, the steel had managed to be more expressive. But it was a start. One more layer of shell was discarded and, from how much dust had been ejected in the process, a layer that had not been exposed to the light in a very long time.   
  
“My thanks, your Grace. It should at least be easier to speak face to face, as one ‘Survivor of Eternity’ to another, as you put it. Quite a dashing title, I think, for our exclusive brethren.”   
  
“I...hm. Yes, Brethren. Indeed we are…”   
  
“Indeed! You and I. Two of a kind. ”    
  
“... _ indeed _ .”   
  
G'raha paused for a moment. He’d said it flippantly at first but now that the subject of their mutual experience had been broached....well of course there was so much he  _ wanted  _ to say. He’d had a whole list of questions ready to fire off in the back of his head on the airship ride up but right now they all seemed so frightfully hard to recall. How do you even talk about such a thing, realistically? He couldn’t very well just ask,  _ so, how did you cope with being unearthed from the tomb of your own making to face a world in chaos? _   
  
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do in times like this when things are going so cordially,” the Empress said, breaking his train of thought. Well at least he wasn’t alone in struggling to find the words for a meeting like this.    
  
“...do they usually not?” G'raha replied before he realized the implication of what she had said “Wait, do you mean this has happened more than once?!”   
  
“Oh yes, all the time after I had met Marguerite. It was quite a peculiar twist of fate if I am to be honest. We’d run into some traveller from ancient times attempting to halt, or cause, some great crisis and I’d start some massive disagreement and by the time we could stomach to look at each other the problem had been solved and we were already parting ways. There was rarely much time for polite conversation. It was...harder to face another like myself, in those days.”   
  
“Ah, then, this I suppose is a nice change of pace?”   
  
“Yes, I suppose it is…”   
  
Silence fell between them, thick and heavy. Now that they were here, actually talking about it, or trying to talk about it, G'raha found  _ himself  _ at a loss. He’d convinced himself this would all be so easy... What he’d hoped of Calofisteri, most of all, was that she’d understand, not as a dragon, or a spirit, or a machine but as a normal woman who had made a single impossible choice, thousands of years ago. He was quickly realizing the weight of the fact that she truly, obviously did.    
  
Selfishly he’d imagined—well not even imagined, hoped without putting any form to it—that they’d find some peace in showing each other their scars, to have a small but vital bit of comfort in a way none of his new friends and comrades could ever manage, to feel  _ known  _ by one another. He hadn’t considered what that truly meant. To see himself reflected in the sad dead eyes of the woman looking down at him, talking around all the pain these meetings had caused in the past… Was he hurting her now, too? Was this just going to end up hurting himself? All his questions, the real ones, the ones he truly wanted to ask with such deep desperation… all of them seemed so terribly cruel.   
  
He could feel his reflection turning them back around on him, exposing this for the clumsy interrogation it was always going to be, demanding to know what it felt like for her to watch, as the gates closed before her eyes, to wake and to find everyone she’d ever known had vanished. Worse, to have tried to sleep knowing as absolute certainty that was all that awaited her, to try to sleep again knowing the terror that it might hold. All he’d accomplished here was to make his own regrets harder to ignore, coiling and oozing around his heart, or what was  _ left  _ of his heart that hadn’t been eaten by the tower just to keep him alive. Pressure so much that he felt his heart truly might crack. No wonder every meeting like this had ended in blows. He looked at her and all he saw was himself, and Twelve forgive him, but he wanted to punch that wretched coward as hard as his body could muster right now.   
  
For the first time since the gates had been thrown wide before him and this dark future had beckoned, here, in front of the Empress, G'raha Tia no longer felt alone. He was coming to understand how truly terrifying that was.    
  
In fact, he was so transfixed with the chasm of pain before him that he didn’t even notice that the two of them truly  _ weren’t  _ alone anymore, until one of those unseen intruders quite forcefully shoved him out of his head and out of the way.   
  
“H-huh?”   
  
“Oops, sorry…”   
  
As G'raha turned his gaze down closer to the floor and found himself at the center of a raging river of...children. A crowd of colorfully dressed youths of all shapes and sizes had rushed into the room, many of them gawking around, especially at the Empress herself, who’s stone-like visage has not twitched a muscle even as she raised a hand to it in what was surely embarrassment.

“Ah. The children, here so soon. And we haven’t even replenished the tea snacks yet...oh and to think I haven’t offered you a seat this whole time when they are in such abundance…”

G’raha was a little stunned, and not just because he’s been shaken out of his spiral by the surprisingly firm shoulder of a young Vanu-Vanu. The spectacle before him was certainly an unexpected one. As the Empress fussed at her carelessness, the children drowned her out with  _ ooh _ ’s and  _ ahh _ ’s as they took in the full size of her, which only grew louder as they took in her unmasked visage.

“I didn’t even know she had a face!”

“Duh, there’s a statue of it at the scholarium! The one with Lady Darkeyes? Everyone knows it!”

“Well I’ve never been there…”

“Well, you don’t even have to! It’s obvious she’d have a face! You’re such a bumpkin!!”   
  


“...she’s so  _ pretty… _ ”

“...and  _ big… _ ”

“And  _ spiky _ !!!”

And so they continued, laughing and arguing amongst themselves as, before the throne, a twin set of stone stairs rose smoothly from the floor to create a path up to her seat. Those children that were able to scrambled up it excitedly, while Calofisteri gently extended a few vine-like locks of her hair to those that needed it. Soon they were all seated upon her lap, staring up eagerly at the titanic face above them, with only a little jockeying for places among them. Around G'raha, the crowd had been replaced by a much more well behaved gathering of adults. Parents presumably, some standing beside him watchfully while others sat at those tables still laden with sweets. Some familiar looking staff had also joined them, quickly laying out fresh plates and cups and offerings of tea. So swept up in the sudden influx of people, even G’raha soon found himself holding a steaming hot cup and saucer.

The adults also muttered amongst themselves at the Empress, unmasked as she was, in between a few polite introductions and unassuming handshakes proffered in his direction. Apparently her comment about it being years was no understatement. To hear the way they gossiped about it, it might even have been decades. G’raha took a sip of what to him tasted more like warm cream and sugar than anything approaching tea, and considered the weight of that.   
  


“Forgive me, envoy. It seems I underestimated how quickly my other guests would reach the palace today.” The Empress offered coolly as things began to calm down and everyone was seated safely upon her lap. Sitting there, regal and motherly, she looked more like a goddess than the voidkin she truly was. “I apologize for the inconvenience but surely you can grant them a moment of our time? They’ve had quite the journey to get here. You’re welcome to observe, if you wish. It may even help with your inquiries.” The Empress of Shadows turned to her little subjects, “Oh, and if you all would welcome our envoy from the surface, G’raha Tia, I would be forever in your debt.”

It hadn’t really been much of a question. Once a woman erects a bespoke staircase to ferry an entire classroom of children to her thighs in front of you, there’s generally no going back. Certainly nobody around him seemed to disagree. 

“It would be my pleasure, your Grace,” he said, with another small bow, trying to recalibrate things a little from the mess of their previous conversation. This prompted muted chuckling from some of the crowd around him. The Empress hadn’t said anything but clearly his formality was still a bit over the top. Rather than stay the center of attention he opted to take the unspoken offer of a seat, and soon found a free space at a table. Now that he stood by them, he could see they were all positioned to give a clear view of the throne and all upon it, where the children were busy regaling the Empress with embellished tales of their trek to the capital. Quite a long one, from the sounds of it. As he sat down, one of the Empress’ assistants bustled by, a tall, broad shouldered girl who’s damp green scales and forked lizard-like tail marked her as a descendent of Nym, refilling everyone’s cups. 

“ _ It seems _ is doing a lot of work for just two words,” she hissed through razor sharp teeth as she tended to G’rahas neighbor, loudly enough that she clearly meant to be overheard. He met her with a pointled glance and got the same glare in return that he’d received when he’d first entered the chamber before she huffed away. Despite the hostility, he nevertheless felt a pang of sympathy for her and her fellow workers; he was already beginning to put together from how swift and convenient the interruption was that maybe he wasn’t the only one the Empress had been frustrating with her way of doing things today.

Joining him at the table were an elezen and lalaffelan woman as well as a kobold, whose long horned helm of blue tinged steel reminded him of the style used by Mhachi soldiers. He’d long ago gotten over his culture shock over such things back on the surface. It had been hundreds of years since anyone had need of a term like  _ beast tribe _ after all. In the wake of the Calamity, the collapse of old power structures had left room for something new, though even centuries could not fully heal the scars that were carved in his own time. In fact, for as large a physical part of the land as the Empress was, the floating continent would never have existed without the expertise and charity of the Vanu-Vanu, the tonberries, the kobolds...even a ragtag crew of moogle and dragon engineers to hear the tales of it. Just as it was below in the vast commune of the Ironworks, here above the clouds a dream had brought them together as the world was torn apart.    
  
“First time at the festival luv?” offered the lallafel, who quickly introduced herself Hatoto. She seemed the only one interested in conversation, as they watched the children's tale of fending off a terrifyingly fierce gaelicat with spells and hurled stones turn into fending off a dozen, then a hundred, then a thousand lead by a fearsome ahriman; the Empress nodding seriously at every newly crafted exaggeration. The elezen, Alfelle was particularly excited, taking picture after picture from a sinister looking black and purple metal box with a bloodshot yellow eye on its front, that spewed a cloud of smoke crackling with electric charge with every closing of it’s shutter. An uncommon sight among the ironworks but however unsettling it still seemed to him, it was just a quirk of life up here. It wasn’t like they could just mine for ceruleum deposits on a floating island after all. The Empress' decision to revive the old methods of using Voidsent blood and flesh to power magitech had done much good for the people of the sky, even if at its best the technology it produced were thoroughly macabre. All things considered, they were easy enough company to help drag him out of his own head.   
  
“Is it that obvious?”    
  
“Just a touch. Bit funny seeing someone treat ol’ Empress like actual royalty is all. Innit, Zi Go?”   
  
“Oh yes. Very Funny. Humiliating, mortifying, funny,” replied Zi Go flatly with a wave of her paw, eyes firmly fixed on the Empress legs, where another horned kobold was jumping up and down energetically as they mimicked casting a great fireball to scatter their kitten assailants.   
  
“Well I was hardly expecting an audience,” G’raha said, feeling just the tiniest bit humiliated, mortified, and yes, funny. At least he fit into the festival atmosphere, if only as a clown.   
  
“Oh don’t take it the wrong way, luv. Pretty normal reaction for surface folk. The ‘ol tin can is still plenty impressive, the first couple times anyway.”   
  
G’raha took another sip of what might have once been tea beneath all the sweeteners, and realized that once upon a time the three mothers beside him would have also been children sitting upon Calofisteri’s knee, watched over by their own parents who may well have done the same... “You’re all old hands at this then I take it?”   
  
“Ooh listen to you, talking about old hands with a mitt like that!” Hatoto said with a chuckle as she glanced towards the mi’quotes exposed crystal fingers, before waving it off as just a joke. “It’s nothing that special you know. Just a bit of fun for the sprouts, same as it’s always been.”   
  
“Yes yes, fun. Fantasy, farce, fun.” Zi Go added with an irritated tinge to her raspy voice before she suddenly shot up to stand on her chair to yell through cupped hands. “BA GO I TOLD YOU TO BE CAREFUL! PULL DOWN CHILD! YOU’LL BREAK YOUR HELM LIKE THAT!!”   
  
Sure enough, in the kobold child's excitement they had somehow managed to get their curved horns stuck into the Empresses Armor and were struggling in a panic to get them free. The Empress did not so much as blink, instead comforting the child that no harm was done and smoothly moving the conversation forward. With Zi Go mortified herself and Hatoto trying her best to comfort her without laughing too hard, Alfelle, finger still enthusiastically hammering the trigger of her voidtech camera and littering the table in front of her with thin printed images, was kind enough to explain what was going on.    
  
“Ooh, ooh, this is the good part you know!” she said in an excitable whisper, as a hush had fallen on the dining tables. “It’s funny having to explain it, but see, everyone gets up on the Empress’ Knee and tells her about their year, and gets to ask for a boon in return! Ooh, my Aponne has been so excited about this for moons now, she wouldn’t even tell me what she planned to say, it’s so precious! look at her up there! Oh, oh no sweetie don’t wave at mummy you’ll miss your turn…”   
  
G’raha nodded along, getting more or less the gist through the proud mother's hushed motor mouth. It reminded him a bit of the old starlight celebration, albeit focused on the charity of one Empress and not a whole community. “And this is for everyone on the continent, yes? I imagine the capitol must get pretty crowded…”   
  
“Oh no no no! That would be silly, wouldn’t it? Most villages just make their own Empress you know?” G’raha raised an eyebrow and Alfelle waved her hand in the negative, barely taking her eyes from the camera lens for a millisecond to gauge his reaction. “Nonono, it’s all  _ real _ , we just have a set of old armor like hers but, you know, more hyur sized and we, kind of, clean it up and dress up the tip of one of her vines in it and there you go, one festival approved Empress! And then we set up the tables and cakes...oh but don’t tell the children that, they like to think she does it all herself, it’s part of the, oh I don’t know, magic? But this year well…”   
  
“Sometimes the vines fade. Fail, fracture, fade.” Zi Go muttered as she tried futilely to tell her son through hand signals and mime to straighten up his helmet.   
  
“Oh don’t be so dramatic you two, you’ll spook him! It’s just a bit of crystallization luv, happens all the time on the rim. Good excuse as any to take a nice carriage trip up to the capital for once, eh?”   
  
“I see…” G’raha nodded along. He had read a lot of theory about the maintenance needed to keep the Empress's body functioning with her volatile aether, but he hadn’t thought of how it might actually affect the people around her. Perhaps, far from Dun Scaith where all that people interacted with was her silent and watchful roots, they saw her more as a temperamental piece of machinery, or a particularly needy plant than anything like a person. Suddenly the significance of this little personal event made a lot more sense.    
  
The gifting ceremony went forward, feeling in tone more fit a classroom than a grand palace. The children dutifully rushed through their thoughts on life in the past year one at a time, in awkward practiced monotone, and the Empress dutifully nodded and congratulated them on a job well done. It was all the same kind of standard peaceful fare, memories of summer play and winter feasts, achievements at schoolwork and strange sights off the edge of what they knew of the world. But when it was time to ask their boon, each one of them lit up with excitement. G’raha had wondered how that part must have worked; did she have a stash of carefully chosen items behind the throne somewhere, perhaps chosen in advance by their parents? 

The reality was much more in line with the rest of the continent’s slightly odd culture. Rather than toys or clothes or books, the children’s demands were more in line with crystallized matter formed of her flesh, and potent coagulated blood that dripped and hardened into ominous green jewels from an outstretched finger. Hatoto had to cover her mouth to stop herself from laughing too hard at his wide eyed reaction as the Empress casually tore off a chunk of her vine-like body and revealed it to have hardened into the gemlike figure of a unicorn, to wild acclaim no less. It made sense in theory. The crystals were catalysts for magecraft, the blood could power all manner of gadgets and playthings all year long, but that didn’t make it any less morbid to watch. 

Nobody else was phased. Even Zi Go, who seemed the least invested in the whole affair, nodded proudly when her son requested a drop of particularly dark aspected ichor to start his own miniature voidforge. Apparently, the family didn’t usually celebrate the festival by seeing the Empress, but this year Ba Go had begged hard enough and extolled mightily enough the value of being granted his first drop of darkness from the original voidsmith herself to get her to relent. It was hardly that unusual as he found out later. The Festival was about all the aspects of how the floating continent came to be, and every story of how it’s people came to be there, and the Empress was just one of millions in that respect.Traditions of the old world and the new were brought to life dozens at a time, shoulder to shoulder, a brilliant patchwork celebration of cultures and people, fitting for a brilliant patchwork land. It was such a shame he had but one night to see it…

“I’d like a bone please. Um. A finger joint would be nice but any one will do! Um, if it’s not too much trouble…”

Alfelles trigger finger ground to a halt. Aponne, who has inherited something of her mother’s fast tongue, had blazed through her memories of the past year before bashfully making her request, and judging by the muttering among the other parents and the stony look on her mother’s face, it must have been quite an unusual one.

“A bone, child? Whatever could you want with that?” The Empress asked, head tilted to one side in obvious confusion.

“Ya Alfy, whatever  _ could  _ she want with that?” Asked Hatoto, with a devilish grin on her face, clearly already knowing the answer.

“For a sword!” Aponne said, her eyes sparkling brightly with sudden and intense fervor, as Alfelle listened in growing horror. “I want to forge a blade to match the one you made for Saint Laurisse!”

“Oh? How curio—“

“Aponne, you bumpkin!” Interrupted the self satisfied voice of Hatoto’s daughter, Meltoto, as she had done a dozen times throughout the whole affair, with such a self appointed air of authority it caused even the empress pause. “Saint Laurisse didn't have some gross  _ bone  _ sword, she had an  _ adamantite  _ one, like a  _ real  _ knight.”

  
Aponne shot up from her seat to get right in the other child's face, wearing a look of smug satisfaction at the chance to finally get one over the know-it-all lalaffel. It gave G’raha a pang of sudden nostalgia as he remembered any number of similar arguments he had once had with Krile...although for Aponne’s sake he hoped she would fare far better than he ever did. “Ha, show’s what  _ you _ know, MelDODO, because  _ actually,  _ Saint Laurisse’ blade had a reliquary in it’s hilt,  _ with  _ a bone,  _ from  _ a saint!”   
  
“Wh-you just made that up you choco-brain!” Meltoto hollered, jumping to her feet as well, while between the stunned Alfelle and the wickedly chuckling Hatoto, neither of their parents were in any state to reign them in.   
  
“Hehehe, oh yeah? Why don’t we ask the Empress then? She made it for her after all!”   
  
“Yeah, lets ask the Empress about your DUMB MAKE BELIEVE BONE SWORD for BABIES so you can embarrass yourself even more!!”   
  
The Empress, who up to this point had been stuck with her palms raised meekly trying to get the two of them to calm down, clasped her hands awkwardly to her chest once the attention was put back on her. “Oh, well...yes, young Aponne speaks the truth…” Aponne’s fist shot up in triumph as Meltoto returned roughly to her seat, pouting fiercely and muttering about how the books  _ she’d  _ read didn’t say anything about any stupid bone.    
  
“See I  _ told  _ you, Mel _ dodo _ ! You think you know everything, but you don’t even know about how the Empress made Saint Laurrisse her sword, or helped her reclaim her honor and become a knight of Ishgard, or taught her how to make a blade  _ so big _ she could cleave the  _ whole _ Sea of Clouds in two, but  _ I  _ do and  _ I’m  _ going to learn how to do it too! So there!”   
  
Something tickled the back of G’raha’s brain as he listened to the child's increasingly impassioned speech. Alfelle had finally relinquished her iron grip on her camera and had her head cradled in her hands, and Hatoto was looming over her as best a Lalaffele could, standing on her chair with a ridiculously devilish grin on her face as she lapped up the elezen’s utter mortification.    
  
“Hmm, I see. Tell me child, where did you hear such fantastical things about my departed protege? While you have, mostly, the right of it, that’s hardly what you might read about her from the church. They don’t even mention my own small role in her life as I remember it,” the Empress said, losing the stiff, rehearsed tone that would have carried her through any number of similar ceremonies today, her interest clearly sparked.   
  
Nevermind her eyes, Aponne’s whole body seemed to be sparkling with untapped enthusiasm. “WELL! I found a bunch of really, really amazing books that my mum had with all these  _ amazing  _ stories about her! They’re super rare and handwritten and everything!”   
  
Alfelle’s head collided with the table loudly and she let out a groan of utter despair. “I’ve read them all a bunch of times, there’s  _ soooo  _ many stories in them! Like, how hard she worked to restore her House even when she was really poor and, and how she fought to protect everyone after the Calamity and defeated whole armies with just her blade, and how pretty she was, and how she met this beautiful black knight who was  _ super  _ powerful and had a giant sword, and was a master conjurer  _ and _ she was a lost princess too! And they fought tons, but then they fell in love and they are  _ so good _ you have to tell me all about them Empress please! She’s my hero!”   
  
“Wow, who could have written a book like  _ that  _ Alf—owowowow!” Hatotos ghoulish gloating was interrupted when Zi Go forcefully pulled her down onto her seat by the ear.   
  
“Enough. There are enough children here already without you acting like one.”   
  
“Ugh, you’re no fun Zi,” Hatoto said with a perfect demonstration of where her daughter got her extreme pout. G’raha didn’t even notice though. As Aponne rattled off tales of her idol’s exciting adventures a few details slotted into place until, finally, the puzzle pieces fell into place as he recalled clearly a few passages from the writings of Count Edmont de Fortemps.   
  
“Oh! It’s Laurisse de Jervaint, isn’t it!” He said, slamming his fist into his palm with self satisfaction, a feeling of pride at, for once, having the knowledge to keep up with everyone around him; though it was pride that rendered him quite oblivious to how loudly he’d made his proclamation. “So she reclaimed her honor and even became a saint? Intere—”   
  
“CRAM IT, CRYSTAL BOY!!! APONNE ISN’T FINISHED YET!”    
  
Of all people, the admonishment came from the mouth of Meltoto, who had actually begun listening intently once her neighbour had gotten going, their schoolyard rivalry clearly only skin deep. G’raha turned sheepishly to apologize for the interruption, but when he looked up he noticed something above the children. And from the buzz of murmurs, gasps, even the sound of a shattered piece of porcelain as one of the helpers dropped their tray in shock, all eyes were turned towards the Empresses lips, which had curled into a soft, warm smile.    
  
And then, slowly, they parted, and the Empress of Shadows for the first time in centuries began to laugh.   
  
It wasn’t exactly a magical moment. Far from the lilting giggle one might expect from the hauntingly beautiful voidkin, The Empress laugh was more of a lascivious, snorting mess, a deep, half choked guffawing that drowned out all other noise in the room. Between wheezing gasps she kept muttering the child's insult to herself before bursting into another fit of chuckling. Her iron mask was thoroughly shattered, eyes beginning to tear up and lips stretched to their limits. G’raha, who’s ears had flattened a little against his head as he began to feel a fresh wave of hot embarrassment was over him, struggled to see what was so funny about it all.    
  
Eventually, the wild cackling started to ebb. The children, who seemed to have been enjoying the shaking of her titanic body, settled back into their seats, as all the other tables continued their muffled back and forth about how many years, decades, centuries it would have been since anything like this had occurred. G’raha’s own table seemed to be the only one not buzzing with conversation; Alfelle, face still planted on her empty, photo covered plate in shame, raised her camera briefly to snap a few dozen pictures of the spectacle without so much as looking, while Zi Go was waving frantically at her son to try to prevent him impaling someone by bouncing the wrong way. Hatoto, of course, was staring directly at him with the innocent air of someone who definitely did  _ not _ have any intention of running a new joke as hard into the ground as possible for the rest of the afternoon. He tried his best to ignore it, even if he could still feel her eyes boring into the side of his skull without even looking.    
  
It was the handmaidens that had the biggest response. As soon as the Empress began to regain a little bit of her composure they were upon her, leaping up from vine to throne to shoulder with the ease of mountain aldgoats, before breathlessly fussing over her face, cleaning her tears with an apron and offering faintly audible admonishments.   
  
“What if you dropped one of the children you empty headed rust bucket?!”   
  
“Or messed them up with your tears! You know someone has to clean them up right?”   
  
“Not to mention the stains!”   
  
“AND they burn through silk!”   
  
“....Your sense of humor is abysmal”   
  
“Honestly you’re such a clown!”   
  
“Ah… I’m terribly sorry to you all… for causing all this trouble...” mumbled Calofisteri. Slowly the scolding began to soften, tears began to flow once more from a half dozen fresh pairs of eyes and one by one the odd assortment of women embraced her cheeks in something like a hug. It was...touching in its own weird way, though it made G’raha question what exactly their actual role here  _ was _ .

“Try not to stare  _ too _ hard, luv.”

Hatotos words reminded him that, strange as this was, it was maybe one part of the event that wasn't meant for an audience.

“I thought they were just maids…”

“Oh, dincha know?” G’raha was starting to understand why Alfelle had buried her face so deeply in the tablecloth. “Well I suppose they must get up to  _ some  _ maid’n now and then between the—”

“Yes, I think he gets it,” Alfelle interrupted, jumping back to life as she finally recovered from the shock of her daughter's unexpected request, revealing a rather more bitter look on her face than before. 

“Oho! The dead speak!”

“Shut. It.” Alfelle pinched her long fingers threateningly in the direction of Hatoto’s ear before picking up her camera again. “It’s nothing... ugh… nothing so scandalous as Hatty makes it out to be. A lot of them really are just caretakers for the palace. But I mean, you know how it is right? The Empress is, well…”

“I suppose there’s a certain timeless appeal to a giant armored woman,” G’raha offered diplomatically, although to look at her now, fully recovered and blithely snapping one of her armored fingers uncomfortably backwards before shaking a surprisingly small bone joint into a squealing Aponnes hands, it was an appeal he was finding a little hard to swallow. Alfelle sighed deeply even as her finger continued to squeeze the camera's trigger.

“Personally, two yalms is enough of a woman for me,” Hatoto said with a smirk, earning her a glare and a fierce blush that told G’raha everything he might have wanted to know about Alfelles approximate height.   
  
“It’s… No, I think really that is all it is. It’s not like it’s anything special at the end of the day, I don’t think. It’s not like falling in love with the idea of her, like the kids do—” said Alfelle.  
  
“Or like certain young adults might do with certain legendary saints, to the tune of, oh, about four volumes if I remember correctly?”  
  
“—yes, _fair enough, Hatoto_ ,” Alfelle hissed through her teeth. “But I mean, everyone grows out of that kind of thing. It’s just, sometimes, you know, people meet the real her, I mean, just being here anyone can _see_ the real her and just sort of, I don’t know, grow into it I guess?”  
  
G’raha let that idea sit with him a little, turning his eyes to the consorts, he supposed, or perhaps confidants, cleaning up the mess from their sudden shock at seeing someone they obviously love in a rare moment of joy and vulnerability and returning to their tea serving duties. It didn’t sit quite right with him. “It sounds a bit cruel. I mean, how do they cope with it? When they get too old to work or, well…”  
  
Alfelle mused, “I suppose they just do. I only know the basics, mind, but the Empress takes care of her own, as long as they’ll have her. Suppose being as big as the whole continent helps with the whole thing, she’s got to be good at multitasking.”  
  
“But how could any one heart deal with so many partings? The weight of it must be… it’s monumental,” G’raha said stiffly, trying desperately to focus his thoughts solely on the Empress and not the entire world of people right in front of him that he knew, in just a few weeks, neither he nor anyone else would ever be able to see again.  
  
Zi Go’s paw, ever reliable, was the first to be placed upon his own. “You carry much of your own weight, I think, Raha.”  
  
Alfelle and Hatoto joined her, obviously hearing something brittle in his voice he thought himself better at disguising. “Hey, just breathe luv. Lot o’ trouble in the world that doesn’t go away just ‘cus it’s a festival day. Need us to find you somewhere quiet for a spell?”  
  
“Um, yes, I-I’m sorry for just running my mouth about it…” Alfelle added bashfully. It was all kindness he hadn’t, really, done much to earn, but it was kindness he sorely needed. It was easy, lost in his thoughts, to the looming fate that waited for him back within the Crystal Tower. Easy to give in to fear. The certainty of people, of friends and comrades, always pulled him out of it. There was something to that, he supposed.  
  
“Thank you, ladies. ‘Tis nothing, truly.” He let his hand, half crystal though it was, linger for a moment beneath the comforting weight of others, before calmly pulling it away. “Merely a few fleeting worries for the future. You needn’t worry.”  
  
The three women looked at each other then nodded. As difficult as the afternoon had been, and how colorful the trio were, G’raha really was lucky to have fallen into such gracious company. This ruined world was short on many things, but empathy was not one of them.  
  
“There’s part of a story that might help. Illuminate, elucidate, help. If you would wish to hear it. It is of the Empress and the founding. A children's tale.”  
  
“By all means, Zi Go. I shall admit, in truth I came here to learn more of the lady herself, so...” Nobody at the table seemed at all surprised. He supposed by now they had probably figured him as more than just a tourist, as rare as that concept must be with air travel so infrequent and dangerous.   
  
“Very well. It is near the end. When the plan for the continent took its final form. The Empress had lost everything, by then. Her love, her friends, all that kept her tethered to life. Even her name.” Zi Go hardly spoke it in reverent terms, but G’raha found himself listening intently. “Despite all that, she gave herself to serve as the core of our new world, eternally. Endlessly, perpetually, eternally. Her last friend, a black mage, was the one with the courage to ask her, how long could she really stand to remain in this world? How could she, who had been broken by life everlasting once before, brave immortality again? She replied—”  
  
Zi Go cleared her throat, but it was the Empress herself who answered, her deep voice cutting through the murmur of noise in the room like a knife. “ _All I can offer anyone is Today. One single day of my life, for I cannot bear the thought of Tomorrow. But I shall gift it to you, and to all the people who choose to accept it, to the fullness of my ability, and then content, go to my rest. And when dawn comes, I shall gift it to you again. For this one last day is all I shall ever have, and I shall build the future upon it_ … A bit pretentious, I admit. I wish Lalai had the good grace to simply forget it instead of turning it into a fable, but then, that awful sense for mischief is one of the reasons I married her…”  
  
Zi Go shrugged and rolled her eyes, as Alfelle and Hatoto broke into a fit of giggles. By the end, she really had been getting into it. G’raha’s eyes were on the Empress, who simply smiled and flourished a hand to punctuate her little performance, as if to say everything had gone exactly according to plan. That was, until an irate Meltoto began climbing up one of her ropey hairs in a furious bid to get all attention back on her and her long list of yearly achievements, where it so obviously, rightfully belonged, and any illusion of control on the voidkin’s part was shattered.  
  
G’raha finally let himself indulge in a cake as he turned those words of hers over and over in his brain, a smile on his face. Content, finally, that he had learned all he had come here for.

As a little moment in time, it was, for however chaotic and hairbrained it was, utterly perfect.    
  
  


* * *

  
  
Eventually, the afternoon’s entertainment wound down. The children rejoined their parents and proudly showed off their new relics and baubles. G’raha was formally introduced to his tablemates' kids, who were just as charming at ground level as they were using the Empress as a stage. Predictably, despite the scolding of their parents and his repeated attempts to correct them, they all found endless amusement in pestering  _ Crystal Boy _ for tales of the surface world, before eventually getting bored (much later than he thought was appropriate) and playing amongst themselves.

The conversation turned away from the events of the festival and the four of them chatted amongst themselves of their everyday lives and responsibilities, Zi Go’s life as an artist, Alfelle’s hiking trips up and down the uneven terrain of the continent’s rim, Hatoto’s… busy social calendar, his own life as a historian, which was close enough to the truth as he felt he could get. The Empress even floated by to check in, her massive body suddenly and effortlessly defying gravity in a way that seemed at odds with her slow, stiff movements on the throne.   
  
And then, like the ephemeral dream it was, it ended. The tea and cakes ran dry, and everyone went off to enjoy the rest of the festivities, leaving with polite farewells. All G’raha was left with was a few choice photographs and a strangely  _ elaborately _ illustrated offer for a “free crystal appraisal” with the address of an inn and a room number, sketched out on the back of a napkin. G’raha chuckled to himself as he shuffled both into the back of the collected papers on Marguerite, though he hardly felt like he’d need the mementos to keep a memory of today fresh in his mind.    
  
“Was that suitably educational?”   
  
The Empress lay before him. Most of the tables were cleared away and, at her insistence, one had been left for G’raha, placed near to the door so that she might recline on the floor before him. It was a charming way for her to let down her guard and keep things on a more personal level, until she revealed that, of course, it was merely so that her body could absorb all the leftover mess on the carpet through the cracks in her armor. The more he thought about it, the tragedy of their disparate lifespans seemed to him the least of the Empress’ companion’s woes besides everything else about her.   
  
“Yes, ‘twas a most illuminating experience,” he said, as he sipped what  _ finally  _ seemed like an actual cup of tea and washed the cloying taste of sugar out of his mouth. “Although, I wonder why you didn’t just suggest it openly from the start? I would have been happy to join in without the trickery.”   
  
Calofisteri’s eyes darted down to the floor. “Ah, well, it was Syznbryda’s idea really, it was merely meant to be a safety net, you see, in case I happened to run into any difficulties in conversation. I… hadn’t thought things were going that badly, but well… some of my girls can be terribly protective of me, you understand.”   
  
G’raha thought about the dagger glares he’d been receiving all day. “Mm, I think I do. Still, I’m glad it worked out.”   
  
“Yes, you seem to have made some lovely friends.” The Empress gave a weak smile. Already much of the energy of her face seemed to be fading, settling back into the cold atrophy of centuries.   
  
“It seems I have.” G’raha patted the files on the table for reassurance. Today might not have resulted in the kind of thorough data gathering that he and the ironworks would have liked, he felt like he had still gained quite a bit.   
  
“Mm.” The Empress Lazily rolled onto her back with a heavy thud, her face looking all the softer for being upside down. “I think that is enough. For both of us.”   
  
“And what is it that  _ you  _ wanted from this, Empress?”   
  
“To show you this place, I suppose. To make sure you knew this world, while you had the chance, that you might carry it with you, through the rift, and beyond…”   
  
G’raha nodded, a wry smile creeping onto his lips. “I suppose you were planning to give me a civics lesson if we hadn’t been ‘interrupted’ then?”   
  
“Do not discount me so easily,  _ Crystal Boy _ ” snapped the Empress, a little life briefly returning to her cheeks. “This whole building is mostly archives built for my exclusive use. I could rattle off every day of this nation's history minute by minute if need be! But...admittedly it would not necessarily have been the most efficient use of our time…”   
  
“I don’t know. I’ve certainly had worse lecturers in my time.”   
  
“Perhaps. But regardless. I wanted you to know this place. This fragile little dream we are trying to build, both Marguerite’s, and mine, and all those close to us. So that you might carry it with you. And know that it will be there, even when you are gone. To know it will always be...a possibility.”   
  
G’raha nodded. It wasn’t something he tried to think about much... but it was true. Even after he had completed his mission, even after the path of the Warrior of Light was righted, this place would likely still remain. His actions would save  _ an  _ Eorzea but nobody really expected it to do much for this one anymore. The world would still be broken, it’s people scattered, it’s very aether in ruin. However, there would still be hope, small and easily crushed as it might seem. And there would still be people trying to make the most of it for others. Even if they managed to stay the calamity, the world that awaited them wasn’t much better, to say nothing of the unknown shard that would be his destination. 

Maybe it didn’t have to be. Maybe the hope they’d claw back together...could make this ‘possibility’ real there too. “That is a gift I will cherish, Empr— _ Calofisteri _ . I am lucky to receive such a boon, even without gracing your lap.”    
  
“My, how wonderfully clever.” The Empress said without an ounce of sincerity as she rolled her eyes. “Keep that wit about you and I am sure that you and I shall make fast friends, if we are to meet again.”   
  
“I wonder about that,” said G’raha, brushing her criticism off. He suspected that however close he might have gotten to the Empress in their short time together, that meeting the Calofisteri of the past would well and truly surprise him. But then, if there was one thing he had learned from today of how to deal with the strange circumstance that bonded them together, it was that surprises were something to be cherished.    
  
“You leave in the morning, yes?”   
  
“Mm.” G’raha hadn’t really considered what he’d do after he left the palace. They had a few rooms in an inn somewhere to retire too, he supposed, and there was still plenty of daylight left to enjoy the festivities. Behind him, his escorts were getting the gist of events from the Empress’ consorts, and were probably eager to join in the partying themselves while they still had the chance, even if they were technically only here as bodyguards. But still, even after everything he didn’t feel quite ready to say goodbye.   
  
“Would you… wish to join me this evening, once you are done getting a taste of things outside? Just until the sun rises?”   
  
The Empress didn’t even bother rolling over to say it. Just stared at him with those big blue eyes, filled with simple sincerity, and the shared knowledge of how precious these fleeting moments truly could be.   
  
“Well, I must say, that is a most gracious offer but, won’t your girls mind? I fear I’ve already intruded here overlong as it is...”   
  
“Oh no, not at all! Listen.” The Empress cupped her hands over her mouth to yell across the room, though given how her voice carried it was completely superfluous. “Swygthota! Could you carry in a bed for the envoy? We are considering extending this meeting into the night!”   
  
“Can I beat you to death with it once I drag it in here?!” shouted the tall Nymian woman in response, her tail lashing back and forth with obvious irritation.    
  
“With  _ your  _ arms? Yes, easily!” The Empress yelled back before returning seamlessly to her normal neutral tone. “See, it’s really no problem at all.”   
  
“So I can see…” G’raha said with a bitter chuckle. Despite the air of what he hoped was just playful hostility, it was a tempting idea, though he knew it was more for his own sake than for the Empress. Regardless of whatever academic value it held anymore, he really was enjoying his time with her. Then, he remembered that fraught, fleeting moment when the Empress had finally broken her mask and showed some real emotions. Caught in the middle of everything, they’d all busied themselves and pushed past it. Better the Empress spend the evening with those who loved her, while her fading smile still lasted. Besides, he’d already seen enough to carry with him. To eternity, if need be.

  
“I’m afraid I must decline. I’m sure you have far better things to do than chat away into the morning hours, and there is so much of your city I would see with my own eyes. That I might carry it with me, as you wished.”   
  
The corners of the Empress’ lips stretched wider, upside down though they were. A strange, fragile, beautiful picture of something like hope. A shadow forever cast upon the world even in the absence of light. “As you will. By all means, enjoy to your fullest my gift, the gift of a fading Today. Just as I will be sure to enjoy the gift you have given to me, in your graciousness. That of a distant Tomorrow.”

**Author's Note:**

> My second work in the Canonfisteri, written over a long time to sort of come to terms with a lot of feelings the expansion gave me and share a little slice of my silly extensive headcanon where the warrior of light and an extremely unpopular raid boss are deeply depressed, violent and in lesbians with each other. A lot of personal emotions are wrapped up in this one, but I hope it's a worthwhile read for fans of the series, even the ones who don't share my specific flavor of brain poisoning for this dumb ship. Comments always appreciated.


End file.
